


Lunacy and Love

by MeaganRain



Series: Jason Todd: Phoenix [1]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Batfamily caring, Discretion Advised, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, I promise, It Gets Better, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Panic Attacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-07
Updated: 2018-05-07
Packaged: 2019-05-03 13:42:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14570232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MeaganRain/pseuds/MeaganRain
Summary: Was inspired by the prompt: He had this look in his eyes that made you wonder just how many people he's killed. Then, his grin made you realise that he probably lost count."ORAn inside look at Jason's night terrors and how the Bat Family pulled him out of it.Trigger warning: Deteriorated Mental Health. Low-key suicidal. Be warned.





	Lunacy and Love

**Author's Note:**

> I was inspired by the prompt: He had this look in his eyes that made you wonder just how many people he's killed. Then, his grin made you realise that he probably lost count."
> 
> Didn't use it exactly since I wanted to put my own spin to it. Also, I am not exactly sure who created this prompt as the image I got it from had the username cropped out, so if anyone knows, please let me know :)
> 
> Also, just a disclaimer, I have not personally dealt with mental health issues so the depiction here might be unrealistic/ inaccurate. Please DO NOT take what is depicted here as fact or advice of any sort in handling mental health issues. I am beyond unqualified and am armed only with a burning urge to fulfil the prompt and some rudimentary research when writing this.

Jason was dreaming, he knew. He did it often after all.

 

This time, he stood on the edge of a vast canyon, the rocky terrain cut off right in front of his toes and plunged straight down to the pit of shadows, rugged surface blending seamlessly into unknown depths, sightlessly infinite in its dark descent.

 

Across from Jason, on the other side of this hellish trench, was a man. Back to light, the man’s face was obscured in shadows, identity concealed with only a vague silhouette visible, but Jason knew that even if the man faced the light, his face, his body, would be nothing but opaque darkness because this man was nothing but a shadow man; a monster; the manifestation of Jason's greatest fears in one being.

 

Jason was intimately familiar with him at this point after countless nights spent screaming his throat raw from the sight of him. Now, he's learnt to control his screams.

 

Otherwise, the neighbours complain.

 

Jason knew their eyes were meeting squarely as he stared across at the figure. The man was watching him too. Jason could feel eyes on him, like needles dragging across his skin, into his flesh, reaching bone and carving its permanent mark.

 

The shadow man never moves. He stood on the peripheral of Jason's mind, always there but not always explicitly so. He fades in and out, brushing the edges of Jason’s psyche both conscious and unconscious but never _really_ there. He was a shadow man, how could he be there? But he was there, he was _right there_.

 

Some days it drove Jason half-mad just wondering what's what.

 

Real or not, Jason knew the shadow man was a killer. Jason wasn't sure how he knew, but he just _knew_.

 

The look of him, the feel of him, Jason would often wonder how many the shadow has killed. Then, as though reading his thoughts, the man would turn to him, and slowly, from the murky shadow that occupied the space where his face should be, an inhumanly wide grin would stretch, unnatural and deranged. Like a demon straight from deepest, most monstrous part of hell. And that grin would make Jason realise that ‘Oh, he probably lost count.’

 

It was an abhorrent grin and it frightened Jason, loath as he was to admit it, but it wasn't the most terrifying thing about the shadow man.

 

The grin didn't hold a candle to his laugh.

 

Loud enough to echo. Bouncing against the walls of Jason’s mind, hollow and screeching; maddening. It reverberates chills bone-deep like it was trying to shatter even the calcified foundations of Jason's body.

 

Like breaking his mind and spirit wasn't enough.

 

The laughter was liquid madness, slipping down Jason's ears like poison until it was the only thing he heard. It was lunacy. One that Jason could feel trickling into his mind but was helpless to stop.

 

Lunacy was bones crumbling to dust under metal. It was gut-wrenchingly unhinged laughter and the white-hot all-consuming fires of hell. It was luminous green that preceded deep, dark red.

 

Pain. Insanity. Sin. Loss. Blood.

 

Lunacy was all that, but it wasn't death (freedom).

 

Unfortunately.

 

Again, like he could read Jason's mind and knew what he dreaded most, the shadow man’s smile widened, and widened, and widened, until it covered half his faceless head, then it began splitting down the middle and Jaso knew what was coming. He braced himself.

 

It started with a giggle.

 

Then, a chortle.

 

Then, laughter.

 

The manic sound tore through the space between them, resonating in the darkness, stirring the shadows as madness always did.

 

Suddenly, the shadow man seemed closer. Was Jason imagining it? He must be. The shadow man stayed in the peripheral, nothing but a shadow, a figment of the imagination. He never comes close. Jason was imagining things again.

 

But he wasn't. The shadow man _was_ closer. He was half the distance he had been before and he was getting closer still.

 

The laughter got louder the closer he got. The shadows began melting off his face.

 

Jason had to run, he knew that, but he couldn't make himself move.

 

Part of him wanted to know who the shadow man was, another part wanted to know what would happen if he got close.

 

(A large part of him just plainly wondered if this was it. Was it about to end?

 

If it was,

 

Good.

 

Finally.)

 

As the shadow man got closer, the laughter began echoing more intensely. The manic grin never fell from his face but the shadows were melting more rapidly. Jason realised that the echoing wasn't actually that. It was another laughter, almost identical to the shadow man's, cackling in tandem with the first.

 

Was there another shadow man?

 

_No, who are you fooling? There's always only been one._

 

Jason tensed. His dreams never spoke to him. The shadow man can't speak, he was laughing.

 

“Who's there?” He demanded, trying to speak over the twin laughter that filled the emptiness.

 

_You tell me._

 

“What are you talking about?”

 

 _Everything. Nothing._ It was almost like the voice was shrugging though Jason couldn't say how he knew that.

 

“What doesn't that mean?” Jason wasn't prone to desperation, he had exhausted it a long ago, but the shadow man was getting closer and he didn't know what to do. He wanted to laughter and the voice to stop.

 

_Then you stop._

 

“I can't.”

 

 _Liar_ . The voice sang cheerfully. _The worse are the ones that lie to themselves, you know._

 

The shadow man was almost right in front of him now, shadows hanging off him like swamp sludge, tearing and dropping to the ground with grotesque splatters.

 

“What you talking about? Stop it.” Jason snapped.

 

 _No,_ you _stop it._

 

The shadow man stopped in front of Jason. The parts where the shadows have peeled off showed deadly white skin, chalky and creased. Jason watched transfixed as the shadow man slowly lifted his hand and began grabbing at his face, tearing off more of the shadows. He was still laughing, and he stood close enough that Jason would literally feel his breaths ruffled his fringe.

 

Then, as the shadows fell away,  Jason realised three things at once.

 

One, the voice _had_ stopped.

 

Two, he was laughing. Jason was laughing.

 

Three, his own face stared back at him, laughing back, face covered in white powder and blood red smears. A clown.

 

 _What do you think? Don't we look alike? Exactly alike, in fact. Picture perfect. Isn't that right, Jason?_ The voice roared in sick amusement and the laughter boomed around him.

 

Jason— he couldn't even scream, not while staring _at his own face_ laughing back at him. He felt a crushing pressure in his chest and his heart pounded so loudly he was sure the silence would be staggering if it stopped now. He stared into his own eyes, at the unfamiliar but also achingly familiar insanity that wove itself into teal, the deformed grin that was carved permanently onto his face and the fucking _laughter_. He was the clown.

 

 _He_ was the clown. The killer who lost count. That was him.

 

Jason couldn't breathe.

 

He reached up and started clawing at his chest. It hurt, everything hurt.

 

He wanted it to stop. Please, stop.

 

“Jason? Jason!”

 

Who was that? Another shadow man? No, it couldn't be. _He_ was the shadow man, there was only one. So who was that? 

 

Doesn't matter, please just let this end. His head was beginning to get dizzy. He swayed on his feet and his hands dug deeper only his chest because the pressure _hurt_.

 

“He's tearing his chest apart, Dick, do something!” A shrill voice said from somewhere far behind.

 

He felt something wrap firmly around him and he felt the pressure on his chest increase. He couldn't see his clown self anymore. In fact, he couldn't see anything. When the arms tightened a second time, this time dragging him into darkness, he screamed.

 

It came out a breathless gurgle that quickly turned gasps. He couldn't breathe, there wasn't enough air. Was there even air at all?

 

He kept screaming.

 

“Shit, shit, shit, Tim get Alfred!”

 

There was a frantic affirmation followed by the sound of feet pounding down hardwood floorboards. The firm appendages wrapped around him were still there. Jason clawed at it. He needed to get to his chest. He couldn't breathe.

 

“Jason! Jason, listen to me, you're safe, you're fine! Everything's okay. Listen to me, you're safe, we're here.”

 

The voice was familiar, achingly so. Had the clown learnt new disguises?

 

“Jason, I need you to open your eyes.” The voice said soothingly, only a little hysterical, but it made no sense. Open his eyes? He never closed them. How could he open something he'd never close in the first place?

 

“Master Jason,” Another voice,  this time calmer though no less soothing, British, said from somewhere beside him. He knew this voice too, he trusted it. “If you can hear me,  I want you to breath as I tell you to. Ready? Inhale.”

 

Automatically, Jason tried to gulp down air but there wasn't any.

 

He tried again, and again. Nothing. There was no air!

 

“Exhale.” The British voice said, and Jason breathed out even though he had nothing to breath out.

 

“Good Master Jason, now inhale… and exhale… inhale…”

 

Jason wasn't sure how long that kept up, but eventually, he began breathing in real air. The pressure in his chest eased. The appendages — arms, he realised — were still wrapped around him and he was leaning against something comfortingly warm and firm.

 

“Jaybird?” The first voice said and he recognised it now.

 

“Dick.” His voice came out scratchy and hoarse.

 

Behind him, he felt the thing he leaned on heave a sigh of relief. Jason was laying in Duck’s arms and resting on his chest.

 

It was nice.

 

“You good to open your eyes?”

 

Jason struggled for a moment, flashes of his face covered in clown makeup emerging and laughter echoing filled his mind, but he felt Dick’s arms tightening around him and his heartbeat thumping steadily behind him. Jason relaxed.

 

Slowly, Jason peeled his eyes open, his eyelids sticking in a way that told him he had either closed it too tightly for a long period of time, or he was crying. Probably both.

 

The first thing he registered once his eyes were open, was that he was sitting on the toilet floor of his and Dick’s room, with mirror shards scattered around him. Alfred was on his left, carefully tending to his bleeding hands, picking out glass shards and applying antiseptic. The first aid box laid open beside him.

 

Turning his head back, Jason’s dull teal eyes met Dick’s anxious blue ones.

 

“Jay?”

 

“Yeah, yeah I'm back. Sorry about that.” Jason grimaced, glancing at the mess around them.

 

“It's not your fault.” Several voices said at once. Jason blinked and peered beyond Dick’s shoulders to see the entire Bat Clan assembled outside the toilet in various states of sleepwear, looking dishevelled but also very haunted. Even Damian was there, looking shockingly pale.

 

After several minutes of silence, with the only sound being the clinking of the extracted mirror shards as Alfred set them down, then Stephanie cleared her throat.

 

“You feeling better?” Stephanie said, oddly gentle and quiet.

 

“Yeah.” Jason croaked, face half-hidden in and half snuggled against Dick’s shoulders.

 

She nodded and swallowed slightly before turning to leave the couple alone. Cass said nothing but she stepped forward and deftly brushed his cheeks with her fingers before following the blonde, though not enough constantly glancing back.

 

“Glad you're back, Jay,” Tim said softly. He stepped into the toilet to give Jason's shoulder a quick squeeze before shuffling out as well. It was obvious Jason was exhausted. 

 

Damian followed behind Tim after giving Jason a stiff nod. No one commented on the fact that he left both Titus and Alfred the cat the room. Next to Damian, the animals were the most attached to Jason and he, in turn, adored them and found comfort in them. If Damian was aware of the fact and had left the animals with him for that purpose, well. No one had to mention it. 

 

That left Bruce, Alfred, Dick and Jason in the room. Bruce was silently combing through Jason's hair as Jason buried his face into the juncture between Dick's neck and shoulder. Dick had one had laid flat and flushed on the small of Jason's back, while the other than cradled his neck, rubbing soothing circles.

 

Bruce stayed until Alfred was done with the patchwork on Jason's chest and Dick's scratched up arms.

 

“This can be cleaned up tomorrow." Alfred said, gesturing to the toilet, "I suggest we all turn in for the night, sirs.”

 

Bruce nodded his agreement and stepped back and out of the washroom so that his sons could exit.

 

Dick lifted Jason up as he stood. By the time he walked out of the toilet, Bruce and Alfred had already retreated, closing the door behind them. Alfred had left hot tea behind for Jason. 

 

Dick carried Jason to their bed and carefully lowered him onto the mattress. Jason uncharacteristically clung onto Dick, but after some coaxing and reassurance, he released his lover long enough for him to change before demanding his presence again. Dick huffed in fond amusement as Jason aggressively cuddled against him.

 

They laid in silence. Dick knew that Jason preferred silence after. It was a nice reprieve from the mind shattering laughter and high volume lunacy that Jason's head enjoyed imposing upon him on a semi-regular basis.

 

This wasn't Jason’s first episode and they both knew Jason was not sleeping tonight. He tended not to after a nightmare.

 

And because Jason doesn’t sleep, Dick doesn’t either. For that, Jason could not (might never be able to) express his gratitude.

 

“That one was pretty bad,” Dick said in a tone that would almost be casual if not for how well Jason knew him. He carded his fingers through Jason's curls. He was worried. Dick was always worried about Jason. It was ridiculously sweet, even if Jason sometimes wanted to gut his boyfriend for his occasionally overbearing mother-hen hovering.

 

“Yeah, looks like I _was_ hit with some of the fear toxin residues. At least now, we don’t have to wonder.” Jason joked half-heartedly.

 

Dick’s lips thinned and his eyes narrowed his disapproval. “I told you to let Alfred check just now.”

 

Jason rolled his eyes, “Come on, it was a new formula. No antidote we have could’ve done anything anyway. It would have turned out the same.”

 

“At least we would know beforehand,” Dick argued, “Then I’d have kept a closer eye on you. You wouldn’t have gotten hurt.”

 

“It’s not your fault you were sleeping, Dick. None of this is your fault. Sorry about your arm by the way.”

 

Dick sighed, pulling Jason closer, protective. “It's fine, I just hate seeing you in pain. You're not by the way.”

 

Jason raised an eyebrow. "Not what?" 

 

"The Clown." 

 

"How did you—"

 

"You were screaming."

 

"Oh," Jason said flatly.

 

"You aren't the Clown. Maybe a _little_ mad, but not a clown." Dick teased, trying to lighten the mood.

 

"I'm still a killer," Jason said, ignoring the attempt at humour.

 

"Not anymore." Dick insisted. 

 

Jason sighed. "That doesn't change the fact that I was, and am still willing to be if it means permanently getting some of the irredeemable ones off the streets."

 

Dick remained silent for a while and Jason let it be. They've had this argument a million and one times, in a billion and one ways and Jason's answer never changes. Somethings bars just cannot hold. _Sometimes_ , death was the only option. He stood by that. 

 

"It won't come to that." Dick finally said. 

 

"I already had. I lost count, you know? Of how many people I've killed." 

 

Dick sighed and rested his head on top of Jason's, "I know. You said it once, during a nightmare. It's haunting you, isn't it? Not knowing who and how many you've killed." 

 

"Only on bad days."

 

"Like today," Dick said.

 

"Like today." Jason agreed. 

 

Dick shrugged. "Well, the past is in the past, and yeah you fucked up before, but now's a different time. You have me now, yeah? I'll protect you." Dick pressed a kiss on Jason's temple and Jason heard his words for what they were:  _I love you, you know what right_ _? I'm with you._

 

Jason laughed softly and kissed Dick's throat. “Yes, yes, my beloved knight in shining disco suit.”  _Yeah, I know. I love you too. Thank you._

 

He smiled when Dick spluttered. “At least I’m not a knight in shining dildo, unlike _someone_.” Dick protested.

 

“You say it like _anything_ could be worse than your discowing. I _know_ you still have that crime to all things fashion at the back of the closet. You forget who folds your laundry for you, you slob.” Jason poked Dick in the chest with his index finger.

 

“Shut up, this isn’t even what we were talking about.” Dick grumbled petulantly.

 

“Yes, but it has precedence,” Jason said elatedly.

 

“Shut your lying mouth or we aren’t watching Mad Max.” Dick threatened.

 

“You wouldn’t.” Jason narrowed his eyes at Dick, pushing himself off his chest to stare him down. Dick smirked back smugly knowing that he had the upper hand because he had won their game of hide-random-shit-so-the-other-can’t-find-it and he was the only one at this point (other than, probably Alfred, who knew _everything_ and is the uncontested champion of the hiding game), to know where the Mad Max DVDs were. Which also happen to be Jason’s go to movie to watch.

 

“Try me,” Dick said.

 

Jason grabbed the nearest pillow and mercilessly stuffed it into Dick’s dumb face.

 

And a very mature pillow fight ensued.

 

Jason maintains that he won. Dick claimed that he cheated because he pulled the injured card.

 

In the end, they watched every rendition of Mad Max, old and new until the sun came up. Alfred found them curled up together, with Jason tucked against Dick’s chest and their arms around each other.

 

So, really, Jason won.

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback is always welcomed!


End file.
